Abstract
This study applies Charles Fillmore’s “Frame Semantics” (1982) to critically examine how climate change and food security discourses form semantic patterns in selected media and policy-related excerpts from Benue and Taraba States, Nigeria. The research explored how language encoded and evoked culturally and technically shared frame patterns that shape public understanding, emotional resonance, and policy orientation concerning climate change and food discourse using the data obtained online through real-life reports, government pronouncements, and stakeholder engagements on the YouTube Channel of TVC News. The analysis revealed that key lexical items and conceptual structures – such as “flash-point, desert encroachment, soil erosion, agrarian community, conflicts, flooding, and land degradation, and so on” – function as entry points into broader cognitive frames of climate change, ecological degradation, and climate vulnerability, which have negative effects on the food security in the states. The study also revealed that through prototype framings, script evocations (frame ellipsis), relexicalisation/reframing, taxonomies and paradigms, evaluative framings, and others, some lexical items such as “sustainable development, collective action, tangible commitment, welcome development, sustainable practices, actionable policy, validation, and a host of others”, show individuals, groups, and governments’ awareness and readiness to combat the menace of climate change and boost food security in the two states. The concluded that the success or the otherwise of the discourse of climate change and food security in the two states hinges on the choice of lexical items in the communication.
Keywords: Climate Change, Food Security, Language and Discourse, Frames, Frame Semantics
DOI: 10.36349/alqajolls.2025.v01i01.017
author/Kilani, S.P., Abdullahi, A.A. & Awwal, I.
journal/AL-QALAM JLLS 1(1) | December 2025
